Thursday, January 19, 2012

Now Is the Time to #OccupyAIPAC

Join Us in Washington, D.C., March 2-6, to #OccupyAIPAC

by Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy DirectorJanuary 19th, 2012

Ever
since the Occupy movement burst on to our political landscape last fall
and reinjected energy into the movement to make government serve the 99
percent instead of the elites, we've enthusiastically joined forces by doing teach-ins at Occupy protests across the country and sending hundreds of organizing packets to empower local activists to end military aid to Israel.

Now we're ready to Occupy AIPAC. We'll be joining with member group Code Pink and more than 100 other endorsing organizations for five days of film screenings, teach-ins, performing arts, direct actions, trainings and grassroots advocacy during AIPAC's annual policy conference.

Join us from March 2-6 in Washington, D.C. Register today to hold your place.

In our struggle to change U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel to support human rights, international law and equality, perhaps no organization better epitomizes everything that is wrong with our political system and current policies of support for Israeli occupation and apartheid than AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

An AIPAC front group skirts Congressional ethics guidelines to send Members of Congress on lavish trips to Israel where they are lobbied intensively to provide more taxpayer-funded weapons to Israel.

Political action committees and individuals aligned with AIPAC's agenda dumpmillions of dollars into elections to ensure that politicians applaud Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians.

And, AIPAC lobbies for ever-expanding sanctions and never-ending wars against other peoples and countries, with Iran now the focus of their efforts.

Who benefits from the
policies that AIPAC is pushing? Certainly not Palestinians, who bear
the brunt of U.S. weapons transfers to Israel and unconditional
diplomatic support for Israel and live under brutal Israeli military
occupation and apartheid. Certainly not the millions of ordinary Iraqis,
Syrians and Iranians who have suffered harm as a result of AIPAC-backed
sanctions and wars. And certainly not us, whose taxpayer dollars are diverted from funding unmet community needs to giving Israel--a country with greater per capita wealth than New Zealand and Saudi Arabia--$30 billion in military aid from 2009 to 2018.

It seems that the people benefiting from
AIPAC policies are those in Israel and their supporters in the United
States who work to ensure that Israel continues to subjugate
Palestinians, to deny their fundamental human rights, and to try
unsuccessfully to strip them of their humanity. And, of course, also
benefiting are the U.S. weapons manufacturers, who literally make a
killing by joining with AIPAC to lobby for more taxpayer-funded weapons
to Israel to injure and kill Palestinians by the thousands.

Above: Click to see our interactive map of cities where people are organizing to end military aid to Israel -- and sign up!

The US Campaign will conduct a workshop there to end military aid to Israel, and organize a Capitol Hill briefing to launch our new policy paper documenting the devastating impact on Palestinians of U.S. weapons transfers to Israel and build our case for sanctions against Israel.

We've
got a lot of work ahead to counter AIPAC's agenda--both here in
Washington, D.C. in March and throughout the country all the time. Help us do so by signing up to organize in your community to end U.S. military aid to Israel. When you do, we will send you posters, stickers, postcards, flyers and more, to help educate and organize people in your city. More than 2,000 organizers from 950 cities have already joined this ongoing campaign. Sign up today to help us reach our goal of 1,000 cities with people organizing to end military aid to Israel in time for #OccupyAIPAC.

And don't forget about our exciting matching funds competition for community groups that want to organize campaigns to get their city councils to pass resolutions
to end military aid to Israel and redirect the money to unmet community
needs. That's right, we're offering your community group money, resources, training and inspiration to do it!

Thank you for helping us to #OccupyAIPAC and for changing our country's policies to support freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians.

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